Iron Throne – Tribal Wars Come Again

Iron Throne is the latest in the long slew of phone-only MMOs that seeks to suck you in and bring back Tribal Wars.

Iron Throne is a strategic MMO focused around the construction of your castle, the recruitment of soldiers and the slaughtering of enemy armies.

Playing in a similar way to games such as Tribal Wars and Travian, Iron Throne seeks to bring it that same audience through the mobile interface, hoping to grab people with that fervent desire to play while on the go.

Though the tutorial likes to take its sweet time in showing you the basic ropes of the game, Iron Throne does a pretty good job at explaining itself in the long term. Construct farms and lumberyards for food and wood; build various upgrades to your buildings so as to get more long-term resources together, then finally attack other settlements to conquer and raid them.

So far, the differences between this and Tribal Wars are limited to the ascetic.

However, Iron Throne does allow something that other games of its type don’t; individual recruitment of heroes.

However, Iron Throne does allow something that other games of its type don’t; individual recruitment of heroes.

Heroes can be recruited – up to a limited number – that can affect the stats and abilities of your kingdom for the better. What’s more important is that you can upgrade them to make them more powerful.

The different characters able to be recruited in Iron Throne allow some degree of customizability. You can hire special characters that each has their own character strengths; for example, instead of just hiring the super strong fighter characters, you can hire an Architect character that reduces construction speed, allowing faster building throughout your castle.

This additional customizability means that Iron Throne manages to avoid being just another copy-clone of Tribal Wars, instead becoming something decently unique.

However, when considering whether or not a game is worth playing, you have to ask yourself – is it different enough to be its own, individual experience?

Essentially, does the inclusion of unique heroes with customizable abilities make Iron Throne sufficiently distinct from other similar games, and does that distinction warrant its own download?

Sadly, besides from a limpingly different colour design and the inclusion of heroes, Iron Throne doesn’t really do enough to be considered a different game.

Sadly, besides from a limpingly different colour design and the inclusion of heroes, Iron Throne doesn’t really do enough to be considered a different game.

All the same game mechanics exist with other games of this type – castle development for resources, time gating to determine your ability to build more buildings or units, and the eventual purpose of attacking other players for resources and land.

The entire gameplay is the same, it’s just you get a few somewhat miserly opportunities to affect your points with the heroes. In fact, the fact that you can’t determine the enemy’s hero choice means that you will sometimes lose a battle despite numerical superiority, all without knowing in advance whether or not if you’d win or lose.

Who knows, they might have the defensive heroes!

Iron Throne tries desperately to make something special, something unique to call its own – sadly, it has ended up just making a decent rip-off of already established games of the same genre.